


Melatonin

by Guardian



Series: Symbiote Wade AU [3]
Category: Cable and Deadpool, Deadpool - All Media Types
Genre: AU where Wade is a symbiote, Aromantic Hope Summers, Domestic Fluff, Family Bonding, Fluff, Food, Gen, Hope Summers is a supportive little gremlin who gives both great and cursed advice, M/M, Other, Platonic Love vs Romantic Love, Possession, Sharing a Body, Sleep, Sleepwalking, Symbiotic Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:47:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23077291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guardian/pseuds/Guardian
Summary: Prior parts of the series:Hello, HandsomeandAdrenalineNate sleeps. Wade explores. Hope gives terrible advice."Nate tried to eat me yesterday.""That's call 'vore'," Hope says, very helpfully. "He tried to vore you."
Relationships: Hope Summers & Nathan Summers, Hope Summers & Wade Wilson, Nathan Summers/Wade Wilson
Series: Symbiote Wade AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1538296
Comments: 34
Kudos: 173





	Melatonin

"See the number on this clock?" Nate asks, tapping on the digital display of the alarm clock next to his bed. He'd hit 'tired' a few hours ago but had stayed awake as long as he could bear, saying words out loud for Wade to enjoy. The word  _ ubiquitous  _ is his favorite so far. It tastes like the color teal. But now that the tablet's been put away and he's sitting on the edge of his bed, Wade is nowhere to be found.

"Wade?"

**_No. I can't see,_ ** Wade mumbles.

"Come out and look," Nate sighs, resting the tip of his finger against the clock.

From his wrist, a red slime flows up around his hand and then crosses his finger, like a bridge, and oozes across the face of the clock. Close enough.

"What time is it?" Nate asks.

**_Stupid._ **

"Wade."

There's no breath for the symbiote to sigh with, or even any audible sound,  _ per se _ , but Wade certainly expresses his annoyance all the same. Nate waits patiently. He knows Wade knows this, because he explained it to him over and over again, and because  _ he _ knows this, and Wade is capable of knowing everything he does.

**_91:7._ **

"You're reading from right to left again, sweetheart."

**_7:19._ **

"That's right. So it's seven now. When it's three, you can wake me up. Alright? Just be gentle about it. Don't scare me awake."

**_Okay,_ ** Wade says, resigned. He still feels pouty, like a little raincloud sulking in the back of his mind.

"Alright?" Nate asks again.

**_Alright_ ** , Wade confirms. He stops oozing over the alarm clock and withdraws back into Nate again, curled up inside of him in twists and knots.

Nate turns out the lights, slides into bed, and closes his eyes to sleep.

  
  


-

  
  


**_Nate. It's time to wake up._ **

Wade's voice is so soft and so sweet. Nate would almost be beside himself, except that he knows that it absolutely is  _ not _ time to wake up.

"No, it's not, Wade," Nate mumbles, without opening his eyes.

**_It's three now, Nate,_ ** Wade insists.

"No, it's not. You're a rotten little goo," Nate sighs into his pillow.

**_There's a three! Look at it._ **

"I don't need to look. I haven't even fallen asleep yet," Nate says. "That clock says 7:23, doesn't it?"

The symbiote is silent, but Nate can feel its restlessness and disappointment.

"Wade?"

**_Maybe._ **

Nate hums softly to himself. "You're dyslexic. Wait until the  _ seven _ turns into a three, okay?" As soon as the numbers say three zero zero, you can wake me up."

**_That's so many._ **

"I know. But you can do whatever you want, as long as I can sleep through it. Do you want the tablet?"

**_Maybe._ **

Nate sits up and fishes the tablet out of his drawer, reminding Wade which button turns it on and off. Then he curls around his pillow, listening to Wade click the button over and over again until he falls asleep.

  
  


\--

  
  


As quiet as Nate's head is already, when he sleeps it becomes almost completely silent. Wade gets bored of turning the tablet on and off after a while and lets it plop onto the bed. The seven is an  _ eight _ now, if that means anything. But it's not a three, so he can't wake Nate up yet.

Wade pools himself up and slides across Nate's skin in small rivers, just for the sake of touching him. Nate usually likes it when he does that. It makes him go all tingly, sending electrical impulses sparking across his nerves. This time that sensation is dulled, but Nate shifts a little in his sleep, reacting to the touch. For a second, Wade panics and goes motionless, worried that he'd woken Nate up again so soon, but Nate settles down and doesn't wake up.

Cautiously, Wade extends a tentacle and pokes Nate's cheek.

No reaction.

Wade can feel the touch -- both through his own form, and through his host's body, but Nate isn't aware of it.

Wade waits a while, monitoring Nate's even breathing, the almost worryingly slow rate of his heartbeat. It reminds him of being imprisoned in that glass, before Nate had found him. When time seemed to slow down and stretch out so infinitely that it almost came to a standstill. That's how every moment feels, in-between the next heartbeat, the next breath.

Human bodies make no sense. Their skin is too sensitive, their bones are too stiff, and their organs are too delicate. Wade spends much of his time flowing through Nate's veins, memorizing every little structure to learn what's normal, so he'll know how to put Nate back together again. Humans are too easy to tear apart, and slightly harder to rebuild. The wall of his chest is all Wade's recreation. Flesh, bone, blood, and lung tissue. 

It's harder to manipulate nerves and stop them from sending signals to the brain -- pain or otherwise. But when Wade wraps himself around Nate, it's a natural insulation from the rest of the world. Even bullets couldn't touch them. If Wade kept Nate protected from that, maybe he could keep Nate protected from anything that would wake him up.

Wade spreads out to cover Nate, testing this theory. Even if it's pointless, just being on Nate's skin is a joy in itself, and Wade realizes with a giddy little rush that he has ample opportunity to savor it. 

The shape of his body is endlessly fascinating to Wade somehow, despite the inherent limitations of being human. If Nate flexes a muscle, the shape changes, but always in the same way. That should be boring, but Wade can't get enough of it, and while Nate is asleep, he has the perfect opportunity to get his fix. He lifts Nate's arm and moves it back and forth again and again. Flexed. Relaxed. Flexed. Relaxed. Feeling the muscles shifting underneath him is so satisfying, it's almost shameful.

If Nate were awake… he would probably allow the same exploration, but Wade would know his every thought. If it were too strange or too boring for Nate, he'd stop. Nate would almost certainly find the repetition too annoying and the demand for his limbs too troublesome. But Nate had said Wade could do whatever he wanted while he was asleep, so long as he slept through it. He'd said that! So this is okay!

Nate's hands are his favorite. Five fingers to play with, to make them move in hypnotic little waves and feel the tendons shift on the back of Nate's hand. There are so many nerve endings packed into every fingertip, and Wade can't stop touching, obsessed with the sensory feedback loop. There are even more nerve endings just in Nate's lips, and rubbing the two together is a very indulgent experience even if Nate isn't awake to share it. A small slip of the finger, and Wade rediscovers the hard ridge of Nate's teeth, the wet warmth of his tongue, and then the concept of  _ taste. _

Wade opens their eyes and looks into the half-darkness of the room. It's weird, doing things without Nate. It gives him a little bit of anxiety.  _ Alone _ is never a good word in a symbiote's vocabulary. But Nate's mind is still there, dreaming, tucked in their collective consciousness like a fragile thing that could be broken and woken up if Wade plays too rough. He'll be careful, and let Nate keep sleeping.

Before Nate, Wade had never felt welcome in a host. There was never a sense of partnership or trust. It was always a battle of wills, and Wade was incapable of losing a fight. But he'd also never won.

With Nate, everything feels different. There's no hostility, no more fear. It's almost like they're equals. Like two minds in the same unified body. An extension of one another.

Taking control now is almost strange. There is no fight, no need to subjugate the body utterly. In a way, being given permission is so much harder, because Wade has to be gentle and has to relearn what it means to have control. 

When Wade sits up and puts their feet on the floor, it's a novelty. 

When he tries to stand, he realizes that he severely misjudged how to do that, and Wade has to shoot out some supporting structures to prevent them from hitting the floor.

This was so much easier when Wade would just puppet a body like a paper doll held in a clenched fist. But broken bones  _ hurt, _ even if Wade could heal them instantaneously, and Wade doesn't want Nate to hurt again ever.

Slowly, Wade eases back some of his supporting strands and tries to find their balance. It's a sharp learning curve, and by the time they reach the door, Wade feels like he has a pretty good grasp on things.

  
  


\--

  
  


When Hope wakes up, she makes a beeline for the mess area to find something to eat.

It turns out she wasn't the only one with the same thought. She can hear Nate before she sees him -- loud rustling noises that are weirdly uncharacteristic of him. It's even  _ weirder _ to her once she sees him standing there at the counter, rummaging through the cupboards. He just seems… off. Almost like he's not quite awake, or not quite himself. There are trails of red wrapped around his legs, and under any other circumstance, Hope might be concerned about the whole alien-entity-sharing-a-body-with-her-father thing, but in this case, it reassures her slightly to know that Wade would be able let her know if something was actually wrong.

"Dad?" she asks.

_ "Shhhhhhuuhhhhhuushshhhhh," _ is the response she gets. Slurred and strange, like his tongue is too heavy in his mouth. "Ussse ssoft words. Nate isss sss--sss--sleepinnngg."

Hope relaxes at the first shush, realizing what's going on. "Hi, Wade."

"Hii Ho _ pe,"  _ Wade greets in a quiet but sunny tone, letting the P sound at the end of her name pop softly off of Nate's lips, followed shortly by another soft,  _ "Puh."  _

He sways on his borrowed feet and stretches up to grab something from the cupboard, and then stops and just stares at their hands.

"Wade?" Hope questions, feeling a wild dissonance from seeing 'Nate' behave so strangely. "I love you but can you give me some kind of a visual clue when you're the one flying solo?"

Wade runs Nate's tongue over their lips. "Hmmmmmm. It's a p-- Puh. Puh. It's a-- puh. It's a.. poss-i-bility," he says slowly, already considering a solution.

Threads of red appear on Nate's skin, almost subtly -- a thin swath of color across his throat, and faint lines here and there on his face, like veins. But most noticeably, Nate's eyes shift colors, the irises turning dark and then a brilliant red, with lines of red making the whites of his eyes seem bloodshot.

"Better?" Wade asks.

"Oh, I love that. Not creepy at all. Thanks bunches."

"No-oo-oo problem," Wade drawls, reaching up for the overhead cupboards again, with something in mind that is completely out of Nate's reach, and then giving up and rocking back on his heels. He overcorrects and almost loses his balance, webs of red-colored goo shooting out of his arms to help grab the countertop. 

"You don't change shape at  _ all.  _ How do -- how. do. humans. do anything with limited…mmm…" he trails off, as if he can't figure out the right word... or maybe he just became distracted.

"Range of motion?" Hope offers. "I guess we don't think about it. Are you okay?"

"Yes. Good now. Thanks bunches," Wade says.

Hope's lips twist into a half smile, amused by Wade's mimicry. "Compared to being a goo, it must be really annoying to be stuck in a dumb human body."

Wade shakes their head in immediate disagreement. "Nah. Nah. No.  _ Like _ this body. Like Nate. He's a good host. Good body.  _ Great _ body."

"That's great," Hope says. "Do you maybe wanna sit down before you fall down and hurt him?"

"Yeah. Good idea. Like sitting, too," Wade says, slowly moving away from the counter and towards a table. A tendril of slime reaches out behind him as he goes, snagging a box from the cupboard and tossing it onto the table to join a collection of other various foodstuffs.

Hope eyes him with concern, but apparently Wade has mastered the art of moving slowly and sitting down. She goes to the cupboard and grabs her own bowl and something that approximates an alien version of oatmeal, and then joins him.

Wade has… well, it's almost easier to list what Wade  _ doesn't _ have in front of him. It's a mess, and none of it is Earth food, but the best approximation Hope can determine is this: ramen noodles in a savory sauce, drizzled with honey and ranch dressing, mixed with some kind of meat, chunks of something that was possibly a dried fruit, and sprinkled with what Hope could only decide were fish flakes, based on appearance and smell.

"Do you want… a bowl?" Hope asks, quirking an eyebrow, because although Wade had found utensils (both a spoon and a knife), he'd simply piled all of the food that caught his interest directly onto the table in one horrifically messy pile.

"No, thank you," Wade says politely, and then proceeds to clumsily shovel some of the grotesque mixture into his mouth. Hope sincerely hopes that Nate can't taste anything in his dreams.

They eat in blissful silence for all of five seconds, until Wade is finished chewing.

"You know what I like the most about Nate's body?"

"No," Hope says. "No. Please, no, for the love of Thor, I don't wanna--"

"So much  _ muscle,"  _ Wade says. The words are weird in Nate's voice, but Wade has a harder time speaking, so everything comes out sounding groggy, even when he doesn't stop to play with the words. It's almost like they're drunk. "He big. Every other host is so scrawny compared to Nate."

Hope lifts her eyebrows in amusement, realizing that she's technically just been insulted. "Really? Scrawny."

"Barely any muscles! You're all these weird pieces of meat with sticks inside, wrapped up in nerves and veins-- oh," Wade stops, finally having noticed Hope's face during his little rant. "Oh. I'm sorry. Is that rude?"

"No. Continue. This is actually fascinating," Hope says, planting her chin in her hand to listen. "Why is muscle better than nerves, for a symbiote?"

"Not  _ better," _ Wade says, with a strange body movement that Hope realizes should probably be a shrug. "Not exactly. Nerves are fun. Need to be careful with those, but feeling? Lovvve feelinggggs."

"Symbiotes don't feel anything, on their own?"

"Do. Do feel, but different. Humans feel things so intensely. Especially the brain chemical type feelings."

"Emotions," Hope supplies.

_ "Yes. _ Chemicals, though. You make your own. Tasty. Symbiotes can't do that. And eyes! Eyes are different," Wade mumbles, pushing his spoon through the mass of noodles in front of him. "For symbiotesss… we feel without feeling. See without seeing. No nerves. No eyes. Not unless… we choose that form. We move without muscles and sticks. Oh!  _ Muscles,"  _ Wade purrs again, with pure reverence, as if he'd completely forgotten they existed and only just rediscovered them.

"Muscles," Hope agrees, taking a spoonful of her breakfast.

"Every human has meat. Blood. Sticks."

"Bones."

_ "Bones.  _ I know that word. Those aren't much fun. Nerves. Those are fun. Brains, those are best. Best, best. But  _ muscles." _

"Muscles," Hope repeats, deeply amused. She's determined to ride out Wade's derailed train of thought.

"Not every human has muscle like this. There's so  _ much," _ Wade groans, almost sounding like he might cry in appreciation. "I can  _ work _ with that. Blood is nice. Organs are okay. But muscle I can really sink into. And Nate is so.  **So.** So so so so so."

"Yeah, he's pretty so."

_ "So _ so!"

Hope grimaces, trying not to laugh. "I hate that I get what you mean."

"Tongues are nothing  _ but _ muscle," Wade adds, pawing their fingers at their mouth.

"I know. Isn't it cool? Is it like having a tiny you inside your meat mouth?"

Wade drops their hand, brows furrowed at her question. "No. It's like having meat inside my meat mouth. Warm, wet, meat."

"Okay, stop saying meat, it's getting weird. In a bad way instead of a great way."

"Meat, meat, meat, meat, meat."

"Nice try, dork, but out of context it doesn't bother me anymore," Hope says. She keeps eating her breakfast, vaguely aware of Wade staring at her. He seems lost in thought, so she doesn't say anything about it, until finally Wade seems to come back to the moment, with a question pulled from the aether of his chaotic mind.

"Do humans…?"

Hope pauses, waiting for Wade to remember to finish the question. "Do humans what?"

Wade is silent for a while, completely blank, and then the question comes back.

"Do humans always eat with their mouths?"

Hope stares at him, and then her food, and then the floor, immediately wondering  _ what other body part Wade thinks humans eat with.  _ But after a moment of wild inner turmoil, Hope realizes that for a formless slime, whose every cell is simultaneously every single "part" of its body at once, it might be a little confusing to encounter a species with specialized cells and organs and body parts.

"Yes."

"Ohh," Wade says, very softly. "Nate tried to eat me yesterday."

_ Oh. _ Hope's eyes go wide, realizing that Wade had been asking a different question altogether. She can guess that Nate made some sort of affectionate gesture towards Wade -- probably a kiss -- and Wade still doesn't understand what those are. Her dad, and her dad's alien boyfriend, are both dumbasses, so it makes sense.

"That's call 'vore'," Hope says, very helpfully. "He tried to vore you."

"Ohhhhhhh," Wade says again. "But… why? I thought Nate likes me."

"He does. That's why he acts so stupid with you. Love makes people's brains start to rot."

"It does???" Wade asks, with great concern, and then after a half second of contemplation, realizes that Hope might not be being honest with him. "No, it doesn't. Nate's brain feels fine. Better than anything."

"That's because you're in love, too, so you're fine."

"Oh," Wade says. And then, "I don't get it."

He's too cute. Hope lightens up a little, taking pity on him.

"Not yet. But I'm pretty sure you will. You're just slow at understanding some human stuff, and that's okay," Hope says. "Love is hard to understand, because it's so stupid. But you're not like me. I only understand romantic love on an intellectual level. You can actually feel it."

"You can feel love too, Hope," Wade frowns.

"No, not like you. I've suspected for a while, but I never knew until we were symbiosed and then I was like, wow, this is what being  _ in love _ feels like? Gross."

"Why can't you feel it?"

"Some people just don't," Hope tells him, matter-of-fact. "I'm aromantic and I'm okay with that. I love you and I love Nate but that's not the same kind of love."

"It's not?"

"Nope." Hope leans forward on her elbows, shifting into education mode. "You know how Nate feels, right? So you know how he feels about me."

"Yes. He's so proud of you. He would kill for you. Die for you."

"Right. And when Nate shows me affection, he gives the best hugs."

"The best," Wade confirms, nodding emotionally.

"But when he thinks about you, it's different, isn't it?"

"No."

"No?" Hope repeats. "I doubt that. Think about it."

"He… Nate likes my thoughts in his head. And he likes how I feel against his skin," Wade says, rubbing a hand against their neck almost thoughtlessly.

"Okay. So I'm gonna try to explain some secrets to you. The ways humans touch each other is different, depending on how well you know and like each other. If I ran into a stranger, it'd be inappropriate to touch them. If we bumped into each other accidentally, we'd say sorry. If we're greeting each other formally, we might shake hands. Now pretend you're a human, and say you and I are friends -- which we are. I might bump your shoulder playfully. I might grab your hand for some reason. We can hug each other. That's kind of it. Nate is my dad, and family is a closer bond. Sometimes Nate pats me on the back, or touches my hair, or kisses my head, or hugs me. When I was little, I used to ride on his shoulders and fall asleep cuddled up to him all the time. But it's been a while, and now I'm grown up. We don't do that anymore."

"Oh," Wade says sadly.

"Two people who are  _ in _ love, romantically, touch each other differently. They want to hold each other's hands for long periods of time, for no reason at all other than to hold hands. Even if their palms are gross and sweaty or cold and clammy. They like to be cuddled up together, on a couch or in bed. They like to hug each other and never want to let go. Everything is about extended, lingering touches in awkward places. I can't teach you all of that, though. Nate has to."

"Nate likes when I wrap around his fingers," Wade says, considering. "He likes when I'm on his skin."

"Because you and Nate love each other. So, anyway… uh…  _ voreing  _ is just another way humans express romantic affection for each other," Hope says. "They put their mouths together and try to swallow each other whole."

"Is that possible?"

"Normally, no. They just put their lips together, and open their mouths and put their tongues inside each other's mouths to simulate voreing," Hope explains, putting her hands together to provide a visual gesture that involved a whole lot of fingers crisscrossing. "But you can literally wrap yourself around Nate, and that's basically being vored, so he loves that. He probably wanted to return the favor for you, because he really, really likes you but he's too stupid to just say it."

"Oh no. I messed up. I didn't know. Now Nate will think I don't want him to vore me," Wade says, miserably.

"You're fine. Next time you two are alone together, just ask him to vore you. When you're ready, of course. It's a very special thing for two consenting adults to share and you shouldn't feel pressured into it unless you want it."

"I see. Thank you."

"Oh, don't thank me, it's nothing," Hope says. "But don't tell Nate that I told you all of this. A lot of humans get weird about talking about this kind of stuff directly. They expect other people to just know without ever being told."

"How does anyone know without being told?!" Wade cries, and Hope just shrugs. He slumps a little, looking pouty.

"Aw. What's wrong, little goo?" Hope asks.

"I love Nate."

"I know. He knows too. He's just taking things slow. There's no rush, you know? He's not going anywhere."

Wade nods, and then keeps nodding and nodding.

"Eat your… breakfast," Hope encourages, making a face at the mass of food.

Wade picks up his spoon and knife again, using little tendrils of red as a cheat to help guide the utensils, and starts to eat the mess, while Hope tries not to gag or burst into laughter.

They only make a few more bites before Wade suddenly stops, and the red coloration fades from Nate's eyes and melts off of his skin, leaving a very tired and confused Nathan Summers sitting at the table staring at the disgusting mass of 'food.'

He grimaces, moving his tongue in his mouth, and looks up at Hope.

"Hi."

"Hi," Hope says, smiling back at him.

"Were we having a conversation?" Nate asks her, confused.

"No. Wade and I were having some R&P time."

"R&P?"

"Red and pretty," Hope explains. "But you knew that, because you and Wade share the same brain."

"I guess I do know that," Nate realizes. "What were you talking about?"

"How hot you are. According to Wade, you're  _ very _ attractive."

"Oh," Nate says, looking uncomfortable.

"How did you put it, Wade? He's made of 'weird pieces of meat with blood and sticks inside'?"

Red liquid rapidly pools up from Nate's arm, and a little snake-like face appears.

**_"Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up!"_ **

"Sticks?" Nate repeats.

**_"Bones! I meant bones. I know that word. And I never said that!"_ **

"You said that almost literally verbatim."

**_"Nooo! I never said that about Nate!"_ **

Hope grins, addressing Nate again. "He said he likes you more than other hosts because you have the most meat on your bonesticks."

**_"Stopppp,"_ ** Wade whines.

"Just a big slab of steak."

**_"Shut up!"_ **

"Big ol' chonker. Those were his exact words."

**_"Never said that! Naaaaate!"_ **

"Hope, don't bully him," Nate says, trying not to smile. "Wade is still learning words."

**_"That's right. That's right!"_ **

"Besides, 'meat stick' is a term of endearment."

**_"Nate!"_ **

"Wade," Nate answers.

**_"Naaate,"_ ** Wade whines softly. 

"Wade," Nate says again, and then gestures to the nauseating pile on the table in front of him. "What the fuck am I looking at?"

Wade glances between the food and then Nate, and retreats a little bit, knowing that Nate is not pleased.  **_"Brek-fist."_ **

"Breakfast," Nate repeats. "Why is it poured directly onto the table?"

"I offered him a bowl," Hope says, in a 'don't blame me' tone of voice.

**_"Didn't want a bowl."_ **

"Food goes on a plate or a bowl. That is  _ not  _ optional," Nate says, getting up so he can get away from the mess.

"In his defense? That's not food. At least not anymore," Hope says.

"Hope--" Nate starts, and then presses his fingers against the bridge of his nose, completely unsure if he wants to laugh, or be angry, or something else. "I know you're an accomplice in this somehow."

"What did I do?! Your goofriend doesn't understand human table manners, you can't blame him for that, Dad. That's kind of racist, if you think about it."

"You're an enabler," Nate says, pointing a finger at her. "I expected better out of both of you."

"Come on, it's kind of funny," Hope says. 

Nate just gives her a withering look and then goes to find a trash can. He finally finds a bin and drags it over to the table, but when Wade realizes what Nate is doing he becomes distraught and starts wrapping himself around Nate, trying to stop him.

**_"Nooo! That's our brek-fist!"_ **

"I am  _ not _ eating that."

**_"I'm hungryyy!!!"_ **

_ "You  _ are _ not--!"  _ Nate puts a hand on the table to swipe the pile of slop into the bin, but before he can do it, Wade lunges at the food and eating like a starving dog, if a dog could unhinge its jaw like a snake.  _ "Wade!" _ he tries to stop him, but Wade only starts chewing faster.

"Okay, I'm gonna leave, good luck," Hope says, taking her food and what remains of her appetite and leaving the mess hall.

Nate only manages to get some of the food into the bin. The rest is a lost cause to Wade's seemingly bottomless appetite. It's over in just a few seconds. By the time Wade's done, the table is, disturbingly, spotless. Wade draws back to Nate's skin with all the satisfaction of the cat who got the cream. It does not escape Nate's attention that Wade chooses not only to linger on his arm, but that Wade was also covering the hand he'd used to wipe the table. The fucking goo is licking him clean.

"Are you happy now?" Nate asks him when Wade finishes.

**_Yes._ **

"Goddamn goo," Nate mutters.

**_Stupid meat stick._ **

Nate smiles. "If you were really that hungry, I could've made you something worth eating."

**_Wasn't *hungry*, Nate. Just… hungry._ **

"What's that supposed to mean?"

**_Wanted… flavors. That's all._ **

"Every flavor at once?" Nate asks, incredulously.

**_Yes._ **

"Fuck's sake."

**_Fuck,_ ** Wade repeats happily.

"You're terrible," Nate says, affectionately.

**_I love you._ **

Nate pauses, realizing that despite the fact that he knows this, and it comes as no surprise, it's the first time Wade has actually put it into words. Nate lifts a hand to his neck, rubbing his fingertips over his own skin in small circles. Their skin. He can feel Wade pool up under the touch, seeking out the stimulus and affection.

"I love you, too," he says. "In fact, I love you so much, I'm going to teach you something new today."

**_New? What is it?_ ** Wade asks, rippling in anticipation.

"How to use mouthwash."

  
  


x

**Author's Note:**

> Did you notice that Wade spent his entire time just turning the tablet on and off instead of using it? I'm cryinggggg 😭
> 
> Next installment is gonna be smut even if it kills me, so please [subscribe to the series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1538296) and buckle up! 👏


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